Movie review: The Invisible Woman (12A)

Nelly, a happily-married mother and schoolteacher, is haunted by her past. Her memories, provoked by remorse and guilt, take us back in time to follow the story of her relationship with Charles Dickens with whom she discovered an exciting but fragile complicity.

Felicity Jones was a schoolgirl reading Charles Dickens’ novels when Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas were burning up the screen in the multi-Oscar nominated film The English Patient (1996).

Eighteen years later, Fiennes is playing the author Dickens as a middle-aged, father of ten – with Jones as Nelly Ternan, his secret, teenage lover.

And Scott Thomas? She’s Nelly’s mother, Mrs Frances Ternan.

It’s a funny old world, the movies, but credit to all three stars for making a little known, somewhat unproven love story feel so real – and contemporary.

After his 2011 debut behind the camera with Coriolanus, Fiennes is never afraid to let actors internalise their thoughts in order to eschew the modern notion that everything we see has to be explicit and/or fast and furious.

On screen, Fiennes is an impressive bundle of energy as the prolific writer who became an ahead-of-his time, constantly touring celebrity showman,

In bedding Nelly, though, there’s a remarkable stillness that speaks volumes about why this affair will never break through the ice cap of social convention.

Adapted from Claire Tomalin’s book by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), not everyone will admire the film’s vagueness of plot and a structure which is told partly in flashback and partly in the present, when Nelly has married another man.

But while the story specifics might be esoteric, the general theme is a timeless reminder of how love can take many forms – and be particularly cruel to those most loved.

As a loyal wife who has given birth ten times, the look on wife Catherine Dickens (Joanna Scanlan) face when she realises she has no more purpose left for Dickens, is hauntingly wonderful.

For Birmingham-born Jones, now 30, the chance to play both a much younger and older woman without excessive ‘ageing’ make-up is testimony both to how the camera adores her elfin-like features and her talent.

As a celebrity driven to burning his own private papers to prevent anyone from knowing the real man, Fiennes delivers a curious, ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ performance.

The Oscar-nominated costume designer is Michael O’Connor, a previous Oscar winner five years ago for dressing Jones’ friend Keira Knightley in The Duchess).

The Invisible Woman won’t melt the box office, but it’s a well-intentioned British period drama after recent movies like Jane Eyre (2011).

It’s unhurried yet confident, familiar yet provocative.

With fine cinematography by Robert Hardy (Blitz), most ‘Expectations’ will, indeed, be met.